Agnes Or The Art 0f Friendship Read online

  She was not much reassured when she saw Lady Armitage emerge for her expression, rarely rising above the desolate, was now additionally creased with anxiety. Louisa handed the reins to her groom and jumped down from the curricle.

  “I am so sorry that your son is unwell,” she began in the correct manner, drawing her brows together to indicate concern.

  “He looks perfectly dreadful,” her ladyship said on a shudder. “Positively emaciated – and the most horrid colour – sort of yellow.”

  “I daresay that is the effect of living in a hot country,” Louisa suggested, pulling herself together. She would be of no use to her ladyship if they were both to fall into despair. “I am sure he will soon be restored to his normal colour – and good food will help him to put on weight,” she added, gaining confidence in her own optimistic prognosis. “Did Agnes tell you that I thought you might all be more comfortable up at the big house while he is ill? There are not, after all, quite enough bedrooms for you here.”

  “Yes; that is so very kind of you, Louisa, but I think we have put you to quite enough trouble as it is; I do not know how ill John is but, if he is still infectious or anything like that, I would not want to bring something so unpleasant into your house.”

  Louisa was relieved by this. She had not considered whether the man himself might still be carrying something disagreeable but, having conceived a very real fear of the insects which might be lurking in his baggage, she found she did not at all want them brought into her own house.

  “Very well, but please bear it in mind. By the way, I am expecting Mr Armitage to arrive soon. He is coming to our party.”

  “Oh! I have – or rather Agnes has – today posted a letter informing him of his brother’s return; I hope he will receive it before he leaves London.”

  “Well, if he does not, it is of no consequence because I will tell him as soon as he arrives.”

  “Thank you, my dear; you are very kind.”

  On this note of mutual appreciation, Louisa pressed her ladyship’s rather chilly hands, jumped up into the curricle again, took the reins from her groom and set off at a brisk trot watched by Lady Armitage, on whose face a strange expression had settled.

  It would not have been true to say that Louisa regretted her actions in inviting Lady Armitage and Agnes to live in the cottage but she was only now beginning to realise some of the not altogether comfortable ramifications attached to having the Armitage family on her doorstep.

  She had issued the invitation because she hated to see her friend reduced to the depressing circumstances of being a paid companion to a grieving widow who, short of the ready herself, was unlikely to be paying the girl a reasonable wage. Embarking upon a career of such narrow proportions and with so little opportunity to improve her situation struck Louisa, whose wealth protected her from such vicissitudes - although of course it exposed her to fortune-hunters such as Sir John - as tantamount to being imprisoned. She knew that she was fortunate in her parents who, while they might carp at her single status, would never force her to take a step which she was determined to avoid.

  She had always liked Agnes when they were at school together. She was one of the few girls who had not looked down upon her because her father was a cit.

  When she reached home, she found her parents awaiting her in the small dining room where they generally took their nuncheon. Her father rose as she came in and saluted her upon the cheek.

  “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “I went for a drive in the curricle,” she replied, sitting down, “and met Agnes hurrying along the road. We were supposed to be meeting this morning but she cancelled the arrangement at the last moment. I soon discovered why.”

  “Where was she hurrying to?” Mrs Newbolt asked, drawing her brows together.

  “The post office. Lady Armitage had written some urgent letters and wanted them despatched at once. I am afraid her son, the one who had gone to Africa, has been brought home, wounded and apparently excessively ill.”

  “Did you see him?” her mother asked while her father, knowing something of the history between his daughter and the son, said nothing but bent a look of enquiry upon her.

  Louisa tossed her head, looked between her father and mother, and said, “Mama, I think you have forgotten but that son, who is now the Baronet, made a play for me a couple of years ago. I turned him down. He was nothing more than a fortune-hunter.”

  “Well, I suppose the family was – is – in need of funds,” Mrs Newbolt observed with an air of understanding. “Did you like him in spite of distrusting his motives?”

  “I did not like him at all. His motives were despicable but, even if he had been possessed of a nabob’s fortune himself – and a high title – I would not have cared for him; he is not at all the sort of man I admire.”

  “What sort do you admire?” her mother asked with genuine curiosity for she had seen no evidence that her daughter had ever admired any man.

  “Oh, Mama, I do not know; one like Papa, I suppose.”

  “I daresay it is quite usual for girls to wish to marry their papas,” Mrs Newbolt said thoughtfully, “but you are too old to indulge such fantasies now, dear child. He is mine!”

  “I know – and of course I do not really wish to marry him, although I did when I was a very little girl. The truth is I have never met any man I admire more than Papa.”

  “I don’t believe it’s necessary to admire your husband,” Mr Newbolt said. “But it is as well to love him. From what I saw of Sir John, he is not the man for you – but neither would someone who resembles me make a good choice: you would be bound to argue all the time.”

  “I hardly ever disagree with you, Papa, but I suppose you know best. Should I then be looking for someone more like Mama?” Louisa asked, not altogether joking. “Sir John is – or was before he became ill – almost stupefyingly handsome.”

  “Goodness! I look forward to meeting him,” Mrs Newbolt exclaimed with a lively look. “But, Louisa, if you took against him so much why in the world did you invite his mother to live upon our doorstep?”

  “I thought he was safely in Africa and I wanted Agnes on my doorstep, not Lady Armitage.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so before? You could have employed her as a companion yourself – after all, you will need one if you continue to reject every suitor who dares to approach you - and nobody would have had to bother with Lady Armitage at all!”

  “Could I? But that would have been insulting. She is my friend – I could not employ her.”

  “No, I suppose not. So what is to be done now? Will he renew his suit do you suppose?”

  “I do not think he is in any fit state to do so at present,” Louisa said. “I did not see him but Lady Armitage seemed exceedingly distressed by his appearance; she said he was yellow.”

  “That will simply be the effect of the tropical sun,” Mr Newbolt said.

  “I know; I told her that. I am afraid I invited them all to move in here while he is so ill. I thought, you see, that they will be terribly crowded in that little house with him on top of them. I know I should have asked you first but I suggested it to Agnes and it was in fact she who reminded me that I should run it past you first. Since then, I have regretted my invitation but, fortunately, Lady Armitage declined.”

  “You do not want him following you around here, I suppose,” her father said.

  “I don’t think he can walk at the moment; he was carried inside, I understand. Agnes and I arrived after he had gone in. No; you will think me very silly but it was when the men carried in his trunk that I thought of all the poisonous insects and suchlike that may be lurking in his boots. We do not want them here, do we?” she asked, raising anxious eyes to her father’s countenance.

  He gave a reassuring shout of laughter. “I suppose we are not obliged to house the boots too, particularly if he cannot walk. In any event, they can presumably be scrubbed clean – or indeed burnt if they are too badly encrusted. We could accommo
date all three of them and that might perhaps be the best thing to do. After all, however ill he may be – and indeed however poor – the man is possessed of one of the oldest Baronetcies in the country. It would be churlish of us to refuse to provide him and his mother – as well as your friend – with bedchambers since we have an unnecessarily large house.”

  “But it is about to be filled with a whole lot of persons of unimpeachable ton,” Mrs Newbolt reminded him. “Do you not think that the presence of a sick man and his poverty-stricken mama might give people a very odd idea of us? They will think we are running a house for beggars!”

  “Oh, Mama! That is unkind – he is a Baronet, after all, as Papa says; and I have invited his brother to be one of the guests.”

  “Is he more comme il faut?”

  “I have no notion; he is certainly not a member of the ton. He has a job of some sort although I am not certain what he does; I thought that if his mother came to one or two of the entertainments, and if Agnes could be persuaded to attend some of them too, it would be pleasing for them if he were to be here.”

  “Have you met him?” her mother asked.

  “No.”

  “He might be just as disagreeable as his brother and he has not even a Baronetcy to sweeten his nature.”

  “Well, we shall see, shall we not? But, even if he does turn out to be as unpleasant as the elder one, he is not going to be our only guest. There will be legions of other people here so that I do not think we shall find him too horrid. In any event, I have already invited him and it is too late to withdraw the invitation.”

  “We can only hope that he may wish to spend all his time with his mother and brother,” Mrs Newbolt said, casting her eyes up as though hoping that Heaven itself would be unable to resist such a beseeching glance.

  “I suppose,” she continued, “that, if the man is so ill, we should send the doctor to take a look at him. Do you think we should, Peter?” she enquired of her husband.

  “Yes; that would be a kind gesture and, depending upon his report, you can call yourself and either reiterate Louisa’s invitation for them all to come here or say nothing further on the matter. That will make the point quite clearly enough without your having to admit that your daughter acted impetuously.”

  A note was despatched to the doctor as soon as they had finished nuncheon and mother and daughter returned to their planning of the forthcoming house party well satisfied with their generosity towards the unfortunate set of people in the cottage.

  Mrs Newbolt soon forgot about the Armitage men as she began to count the members of the ton who had accepted. There was to be one Marquess, two Earls, a Viscount, a couple of Baronets and four misters – all well breeched and respectable people. They had not quite liked to invite none but single men for that made it look decidedly like a king in a fairytale assembling suitors for whom the princess would no doubt set a number of challenges. One of the Earls and one of the Baronets were already married – and would of course be accompanied by their wives but the list looked promising. Mrs Newbolt favoured the Marquess, Lord Danehill, but was wise enough to keep her tongue between her teeth in her daughter’s presence.

  The young women, apart from the two wives, were all unmarried members of the ton, girls who had either not taken or who had for one reason or another not yet been snapped up. One or two were rather prettier than Mrs Newbolt liked but, again, it would have looked odd if they had invited none but plain women.

  From smug contemplation of the list of guests, Mrs Newbolt moved on to lists for entertainment and, finally, food. This last was considerably less pleasurable as it involved another long colloquy with the cook to make sure that the correct comestibles had been ordered and work was underway constructing the complicated sugar confections which she had requested.

  Mrs Newbolt was a woman who, having been much admired in her youth, set great store by her appearance. As a girl, her beauty had been entirely natural – she had not been obliged to colour her hair or enhance her complexion in any way; certainly it had never occurred to her to control her love of eating ice creams from Gunters but, as she grew older, she had discovered that it was more difficult for a woman to retain her youthful figure and flawless skin than for the proverbial camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Consequently, having rigorously suppressed her appetite, she found discussing food a painful subject.

  She had been tempted to delegate this task to her daughter who, being young enough to be able to satisfy an appetite which seemed to rival that of a horse without any apparent enlargement of her frame, was likely to be more enthusiastic on the subject but decided that Louisa, who lacked her mother’s pretensions to fashionable taste, would be too preoccupied with the guests having enough to eat to pay more than cursory attention to the proper execution of the exotic delicacies planned.

  Chapter 9

  The hour when Lady Armitage and Agnes were accustomed to take their nuncheon, sitting in tranquillity in the sunny morning room, often with the French windows open on to the garden, had approached and passed before Agnes had completed her removal from her bedchamber to the maid’s, overseen the remaking of her bed for the invalid and the unpacking of his trunk – which was found to contain a number of unwashed articles of clothing together with two pairs of boots much embellished with the reddish mud of Africa.

  She looked at these last with interest. She thought it unlikely that she would ever travel so far and found herself fascinated to hold in her hands boots which had trodden that foreign soil and indeed brought several ounces of the stuff back to Sussex. She put them reverently in the corner of the room on top of an old newspaper so that, if the dried mud did crack and drop off, it would not spoil Lady Armitage’s newly polished floor.

  The clothes were almost equally intriguing for, apart from the usual sort of masculine undergarments, they consisted of articles of uniform, much stained and torn. Indeed, the coat had been cut, presumably in order to remove it when Sir John had been wounded, and evidence of this was provided by an extensive brown stain.

  She put all the garments, including several spare shirts and stockings which did not look as though they had been worn recently, into a pile which she instructed Jess to wash.

  The remainder of the contents of the trunk consisted of a bundle of letters and one or two books, which she put on the table beside the bed.

  “Her ladyship is waiting in the morning room,” Jess told her, gathering up the dirty linen in her arms.

  “Oh, yes; how the morning has flown! I think Sir John could come in here now. I will assist him to move before I go down. Will you inform her ladyship that I will be with her directly?”

  “Yes, Miss. Would you like me to help move Sir John?”

  “Yes, I believe so. If we support him - one on either side – I daresay we can get him in here.”

  The maid nodded and the two women went into the next room where Sir John was lying in much the same position in which Agnes had left him some time ago. He was covered by a blanket and had drained the glass of water but did not otherwise give the impression of having moved at all.

  “Jess and I have come to assist you to move into my bed next door,” Agnes said. “Do you think you will be able to manage?”

  He opened his eyes and looked at the young woman standing in the doorway with the maid behind her. The servant was bigger and taller than Agnes and he could see her head above the companion’s and her shoulders on either side.

  “Yes, I do not see why not.”

  He tried to sit up and swing his legs to the floor but was so weak that he seemed unable to achieve, much less maintain, an upright position and kept falling back upon the pillow.

  “Dammit!” he exclaimed. “I’m as weak as a kitten! I can’t even sit up but I’m sure that once I’m upright I’ll be able to set one foot in front of the other.”

  “I hope so,” Agnes responded, “because I have dismissed the men who carried you upstairs. I daresay we can get hold of another pair from the big house
if necessary, but you will have to wait a little longer while we send for them.”

  “No; I don’t want to be carried like a baby – or a corpse. Here, give me your arm.”

  Agnes, inserting her arm beneath his, grasped the upper portion of his and pulled. It was an unnervingly thin limb, seeming to consist of nothing but bone covered by his shirt sleeve.

  He tried, as she pulled, to get himself upright but seemed not to have sufficient muscle to do anything for himself for he toppled over towards her and she, taken by surprise not only by his extreme incapacity but also by his unexpected weight, fell over herself, collapsing in a heap beside the bed with him tumbling helplessly on top of her.

  “Oh, lud! I am sorry!” she exclaimed, struggling to breathe beneath him.

  “No, I am sorry,” he countered with an oath. “You came to my aid and I have felled you on the spot. Good God, what is to be done now? Have I winded you?”

  “Yes; no; Jess will help,” Agnes reassured him, wriggling to free her chest and gasping a little beneath his weight, but beginning in spite of herself to giggle at the absurdity of the situation. She could neither move him nor extract herself for he was surprisingly heavy.

  Jess lost no time in coming to their aid. She was both more substantial in build and more accustomed to manual labour than Agnes. She took hold of Sir John’s arms and fairly hauled him off Agnes, depositing him on the floor beside her where both sat for a few moments, he slumped awkwardly against the side of the bed, she so overcome with mirth that she could not for a few moments move either.

  “I am sorry,” she managed at last. “I meant to be helpful but clearly I have overestimated my powers – and now you are worse off than you were before I interfered.”